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Reviews

'Wilfred': Bone-Dry Humor in a Warm and Wicked Cartoon Universe

The Aussie Wilfred fleshes out its sitcom universe with impressive worldbuilding and genuine heart amongst the weed smoke and scatological humor.

Reviews

An Impressive Group of Artists Attempt to Explain our Essential Bond With the Beat

Even the most eloquent speakers struggle to truly describe their unending passion for music.

Film

The Ice Storm: America Out in the Cold

Ang Lee captures the '70s on film the way Rick Moody captures the era in the book The Ice Storm. It's the midst of the sexual revolution, the Watergate scandal is erupting, and the country's social consciousness is changing.

Reviews

The Ice Storm

The general fuzzed-out sense of malaise that Lee is able to tap into while exploring the Nixon-era sexual revolution (and repression and adventure), creates a point of view that both ruthlessly observes and empathizes with these alien suburbanites.

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Part 5: The Return of the Auteur

That noise you heard near the start of the new millennium was the creative din of a brash new breed of filmmakers tearing down the traditions of mainstream moviemaking. Their motion picture mission statements -- including the ones featured on this list -- remain the rulebook for new generations of anxious film artists.

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Kids' DVDs: June 2007

Given that babies and young children love nothing more than repetition, repetition, and... um.... repetition, I can't understand why even the pointiest of heads would think children between the ages of six months and three years could possible need 23 different Baby Einstein DVDs.

Reviews

Bobby (2006)

As reporter Warren Wilson remembers, "That would have been less of an impact on me, had I been shot [as he nearly was], than Kennedy being killed, stopped, in a moment in America's history, when we needed him and his advocacy more than ever before."

Film

Happy Feet (2006)

The penguins learn to refine their engrained vocal skills not in the interest of spiritual uplift or any such, but, basically, to get laid.

Mike Ward

Film

Bobby (2006)

With Kennedy serving as a symbol for what might have been, Bobby illustrates the problems he identifies.

Reviews

Sin City (2005)

Like the guys, the girls are undone by their reliance on conventional male power signs.

Cynthia Fuchs

Film

Sin City (2005)

Distraught, ornery, self-critical, these heroes are certainly more "anti" types than straight-ahead.

Cynthia Fuchs

Reviews

Deep Impact: Special Collector's Edition (1998)

Mimi Leder's Deep Impact is both less and more than a science fiction-styled disaster melodrama.

Cynthia Fuchs

Film

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

At once abstract and heartfelt, sincere and weirdly charming, the film unhinges conventions of linear narrative along with romantic comedy.

Cynthia Fuchs

Film

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

No in-betweeners in this reductive view of the world: characters and choices are good or evil.

Cynthia Fuchs

Film

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

It's useful to remember that, offscreen, both good and bad tend to be tricksy.

Cynthia Fuchs

Film

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

What is potentially most urgent about 'The Fellowship of the Ring' is how it reflects the tenor of our time.

Todd R. Ramlow

Reviews

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Pop Ten

The 25 Best Classic Progressive Rock Albums

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